Palantir promises maximum data transparency. However, the company itself prefers to remain secretive – as a conference visit reveals.

The company was looking for a remote location, and they found it. The country road leads to the remotest corners of the Marin County recreation area. Here, an hour's drive north of San Francisco, the hustle and bustle of the big city seems distant, like another planet. A deer bounds along the side of the road, wisps of fog drift in from the Pacific coast.

Where the event is headed this morning was top secret until two days ago. Palantir said the event would take place somewhere within an hour's radius of San Francisco. Even afterward, all guests must promise not to disclose the location of the conference. Two non-disclosure agreements must be signed.

Once you finally arrive, a wooden gate blocks the inconspicuous entrance. Guests behind it must show their ID twice. Until now, Palantir's customer conferences have always been held in its own offices. They want to try something new, they say – and protect themselves from protesters.

Wherever Palantir and its founder, Alexander Karp, appear, protesters are never far away. The software company is one of the most controversial companies in the world because of its polarizing clients: the American foreign intelligence agency CIA, the Pentagon, and the Department of Homeland Security. Palantir helps the immigration police, ICE, track down undocumented immigrants in the country. And when Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced that he would review the social media posts and all government data of the country's 55 million visa holders, it seemed obvious which software he would use for this Herculean task.

The American government has long been Palantir's largest customer. At the same time, co-founder Peter Thiel was one of Donald Trump's closest and earliest supporters. Now, with Trump in his second White House and the country more polarized than ever, a Palantir event quickly turns into an anti-Trump protest. What's forgotten is that Palantir CEO Alexander Karp also donated to Joe Biden and other Democrats .

The 57-year-old is a co-founder and still CEO, an increasingly rare combination in Silicon Valley. Despite an estimated personal fortune of $14 billion, he still manages Palantir's day-to-day operations after 22 years.

He enjoys his work, which is palpable as he steps onto the stage this morning. The perhaps 150 guests applaud him, watching the stage with anticipation as if in a movie theater. The Palantir show can begin.

Karp – gray curly hair, rimless glasses – has the build of a cross-country skier. Wearing sneakers and a white T-shirt, he tells his guests, without a script or teleprompter, why Palantir is different from the rest of Silicon Valley. "We always wanted America to win," says Karp, but when Palantir was founded in 2003, that was as uncool as doing origami in high school. "You couldn't get dates with that; people felt sorry for you."

He recounts the early years, when "everyone still thought we were a cult." The company grew ever faster and became increasingly profitable. It went public in 2020. Today, it's valued at $395 billion on the stock market, more than software giants Salesforce and SAP, and even more than Roche and Nestlé. The share price skyrocketed, especially during Trump's second inauguration.

Palantir can repeat this success for its customers, Karp promises: "And in return, you tell them every now and then that it was us who helped you – and that we're not the freak show everyone thinks we are."

Karp may not be as far right politically as his co-founder Thiel, who still chairs Palantir's board of directors – but he, too, is a patriot. Karp repeatedly emphasizes that a company like Palantir was only possible in the US. In the US economy, "people do what works, regardless of how things were done in the past." In Germany, however, things are different, he suddenly says; Karp has lived and worked in Germany for a long time. While the culture there is "great," the corporate structures are rigid. "It's virtually impossible to change how things are done."

After a good twenty minutes, his speech ends abruptly. Karp is considered an introvert, and he seems exhausted. He hands the microphone over to the corporate clients. Palantir no longer serves only the government. The company has now spread across all industries: financial institutions, airlines, insurance companies, media corporations – Palantir guides them all through the data quagmire and shows them paths to greater efficiency. The segment is growing rapidly, having almost doubled year-on-year. The company now earns four out of every ten dollars from corporate clients.

What critics criticize, the companies praise: Palantir is better than any other software at combining and analyzing information from diverse sources—whether social media posts, surveillance cameras, or machine data. The oil company BP, the airline American Airlines, the pharmaceutical company Novartis—all raved on this day about how Palantir helped them evaluate raw data, optimize flight schedules, and develop medications.

Palantir has also expanded its presence in the healthcare sector: Palantir's clients account for 30 to 40 percent of hospital beds in the US. Drew Goldstein, who heads the company's healthcare division, told NZZ. The fact that Goldstein was given this job at just 25 years old, despite having no experience in the healthcare sector, also demonstrates that Palantir often takes an unconventional approach.

Palantir now optimizes shift schedules for leading hospitals like Mount Sinai in New York, alerts doctors to patients' impending blood poisoning, and assists in disputes with health insurance companies. The latter is a huge problem for many hospitals: One in ten insurance claims in the US is rejected. Hospitals lose billions annually as a result . Ashis Barad, chief technologist at the New York-based HSS hospital, says that the hospital's nurses now spend only 20 percent of their working time with patients. A large portion of their time is spent disputing rejected insurance claims.

Palantir's software automates the process: It compares patients' medical records with their insurance coverage and independently submits treatment requests to the insurer. If these requests are rejected, the AI ​​creates a suggested appeal letter. The nurses or doctors simply proofread it. "Instead of 100 appeal letters, we now submit 1,000 per month," says Barad.

Hearing corporate clients talk about Palantir, you might think it's a conventional software company. But walking through the exhibition grounds, it becomes clear that Palantir is a completely separate company. Large men with microphones in their ears stand on every corner. Photography is prohibited practically everywhere.

The outdoor lunch takes place next to a giant drone interceptor from Epirus, a company co-founded by Joe Lonsdale, who was also part of Palantir's founding team.

"Lower cost per kill" reads a screen in a room where Palantir is demonstrating its software. Patriotism is also omnipresent, for example in the company motto: "The eighth wonder of the world is software—and it comes from America."

In the evening, Palantir employees handed out badges and T-shirts at the drinks reception – mementos of the conference. None of the souvenirs bore the name Palantir; instead, they depicted circles and Greek columns. These are well-known Palantir symbols to insiders, but they mean nothing to outsiders. Perfect souvenirs for a secretive company.